Inspiration for a life with books and libraries comes from many
sources. My personal journey of discovery began with a small town public
library, and a family that appreciated reading and learning. In
retrospect, I can now appreciate that circumstances and inclination have
provided me with unique opportunities for living with books and
libraries, and also for studying and theorizing about their role over
time in society. The personal and academic have proceeded hand-in-hand
as complementary sides of the same coin.

I grew up in the small, southwestern-Ontario town of Tillsonburg,
five thousand people strong, after the Second World War. Standard
diversions consisted of school, church, movies, radio, the newly
emerging television, swimming pool in the summer, and skating rink in
the winter. Only a few blocks from our home stood a small Carnegie
Library, now sadly replaced by a larger, modern building. With steep
stairs leading through columns and arches into the reading room and
stacks, the old library was truly a home away from home. I read my way
diligently through much of its collection, including all the Hardy Boys
and Nancy Drew mysteries, usually with a television blaring in the
background! That my youthful enthusiasm for television has largely
evaporated will surprise few people. I was particularly impressed with
the library's regularly changing stock of British and American
periodical titles, mostly disappeared, including the Illustrated London
News, Country Life, Saturday Evening Post, and Look. They kept reminding
me of the much wider world existing beyond our town. Mrs. Mason, the
Librarian, widow of a local bank manager, may not have been technically
the most proficient of librarians, but she did realize that there was no
stopping a young adolescent from reading whatever he wanted, even if it
veered occasionally into racy adult fiction by writers like
Shellabarger, Sabatini, and Frank Yerby. Contemporary novelists like
C.P. Snow would also catch my attention. Interestingly, it was usually
historical fiction that captured my imagination. High school English and
history courses inspired both fiction and non-fiction reading.

The town had no bookstore, and school library collections were
rarely to my taste. Family collections yielded reading treasures, such
as novels, picture books by the Scottish publisher, Blackie, and the
Book of Knowledge encyclopedia that I read assiduously. Comic books were
an important source of reading material, with "Classic" comics
introducing me to serious literature! Vivid childhood memories persist
of my mother, a teacher, encircled by my friends and me in our backyard
on hot summer evenings reading aloud chapters from Robinson Crusoe and
Swiss Family Robinson whose powerful narrative enthralled us all.
Perhaps it augured a future career in research that I thought then of
keeping a permanent record of my reading. I never followed through, but
I did develop the habit of noting when and where I purchased a book.

As an undergraduate student at the nearby University of Western
Ontario, I attended a required course on library use taught by future
Tremaine Medal recipient, Olga Bishop, who graded my final assignment at
100%--surely a harbinger of my becoming a librarian. Years later, Olga
and I would become good friends and collaborators. My academic career
began in honours English and history but soon narrowed to honours
history in recognition of my preference for the subject. Unlike many
colleagues, I developed an interest in bibliography and book history
through history, not literature. Indeed, I find my novel reading
decreases with every passing year; I rarely if ever read poetry. Within
history I felt myself drawn particularly to intellectual and
institutional history--not normally paired together but again indicative
of future directions. In London my love of books was constantly tempted
by the city's bookstores, which were mostly outlets of national
chains. My love of libraries was reinforced prowling through the stacks
at Western and London Public Library.

Montreal and McGill University, where I went expecting to spend a
year or two but where I have remained ever since, have provided me with
unique opportunities for which I shall always be grateful. Not only was
my avid appetite for books fed, but my eyes were opened to studying
books and libraries as academic subjects. The old stacks --subsequently
gutted and rebuilt--of McGill's Redpath Library provided my first
exposure to a major research collection. The city offered more and
better shops than London for new books, but also provided a wonderful
array of second-hand and antiquarian book dealers. My personal
collecting of books and objects commemorating the royal family now began
in earnest. At McGill I was able to develop a career in librarianship
and cultivate further my love and interest in history, ultimately
combining them together. In the mid 1960s, the Library School was
revolutionizing library education not only in Canada, but worldwide,
with the introduction of a two-year (four-academic-term) Master's
program. I found myself uniquely situated in the last year of the old
BLS and first year of the new MLS programs and thereby received both
degrees. The school showed me how librarianship was both profession and
academic field of study needing to be mastered as craft and intellectual
discipline. It was, however, the combination of reference service and
bibliography that would initially captivate my interest. Interacting
with people, learning about sources of information, interviewing and
determining real questions, and developing strategies for finding
information became my major focus. Library classification schemes with
their hierarchical structures resonated with my interest in intellectual
history. Library history dovetailed with my interest in institutional
history.

The 1960s and '70s were a dynamic period for Canadian
libraries and higher education, a golden age of growth and expansion.
During these years, a remarkable range of opportunities and challenges
presented themselves to me. First, within a few short years, the McGill
Libraries, supplemented by a summer position at Sir George Williams
University (soon to become part of Concordia University), rotated me
through almost every professional task then available in an academic
library: cataloguing, reference, selection, acquisitions, systems, and
rare book librarianship. Second, as the first librarian of the Lawrence
Lande Canadiana Collection I was privileged to work intimately with this
outstanding research collection tracking our country's historical
development. I also had the opportunity of working closely with Dr.
Lande, one of Canada's most colourful book collectors.
Bibliography, I now came to appreciate, was more than a tool for
answering reference queries; it was also a scholarly undertaking with
profound implications for all academic work. While serving as Lande
Librarian I was instrumental in founding the Canadian Studies Program,
forerunner of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Third, a
Master's degree in history, in which I undertook an intellectual
and bio-bibliographical analysis of a journal published at McGill
University between 1901 and 1906 (The McGill University Magazine),
plunged me into the depths of bibliographical and institutional research
and set me on the path of becoming a Canadianist and a historian of
McGill University. Fourth, I accepted an invitation from the Graduate
School of Library Science to give the course, "History of Books and
Printing," to be taught in the Rare Book Department of
McGill's McLennan Library. Students would have the privilege of
working directly with primary material in the William Colgate Printing
Collection, which is possibly the finest such collection in the country.
Very quickly I developed an interest in and knowledge of the development
of literacy, writing systems, calligraphy, type face and book design,
printers, and presses both commercial and private. Fifth, completing
this process of accelerated professional and academic development, I
accepted an invitation in 1972 to join the school's full-time
faculty, teaching reference service, bibliography, and the history of
books and printing.

Elements of my career and professional life were converging by the
early 1970s, but the question still remained as to which would
predominate. That book and library history would emerge as my areas of
concentration came as little surprise. In addition to publishing and
lecturing in these fields, I became heavily involved with the
Bibiographical Society of Canada / Societe bibliographique du Canada and
the Canadian Library Association / Association canadienne des
bibliotheques--particularly its Library History Interest Group. I also
participated in continuing editorial projects: Fontanus: from the
Collections of McGill University, publishing research emerging from
McGill's library, archival, and museum collections, and which I am
currently co-editing; Information & Culture: a Journal of History
(originally The Journal of Library History) and Epilogue: Canadian
Bulletin for the History of Books, Libraries, and Archives on whose
editorial boards I have served; and the Occasional Papers Series of
McGill's School of Information Studies whose editor I was for many
years. Most recently I served on the editorial committee of History of
the Book in Canada / Histoire du livre et de l'imprime au Canada.

Like that of most people, my working day now revolves to a
considerable degree around digital media, whether I am word-processing,
writing e-mail, searching via Google, building spreadsheets, perusing
journal articles, or reading books--activities that blend unique and
non-unique materials. I have so far resisted the temptations of computer
games, downloading, and social media!

But what of the future of books, libraries and bibliography-and
their scholarly and historical study--in our digital age? In the
millennia preceding Gutenberg and the printing revolution of the 1450s,
libraries and archives overlapped and were sometimes difficult to
disentangle, as hand-copying meant that both types of repositories were
equally concerned with unique texts. The intent of texts
--administrative and private, or public and shared--rather than their
uniqueness, determined whether they were placed in an archive or
library. Listings and descriptions of archival collections along with
codicological studies of manuscripts concentrate upon uniqueness and
thus do not fall within the definition of bibliography. Bibliography was
developed to describe duplicate texts produced mechanically by printing
presses. Although descriptive, analytical, and textual bibliography have
also developed for investigating unique qualities of printed materials,
there remains a theoretical assumption that all copies of a printed text
will be identical to one another unless proven otherwise. Printed books,
libraries, and bibliography have existed in symbiotic relationship with
one another for over five hundred years, dominating the field of textual
communication and employing increasingly sophisticated techniques of
bibliographical control for dealing with the deluge of printed material.

With the digital revolution, texts are now presenting a range of
issues not easily reconciled with the distinctions between uniqueness
and non-uniqueness characterizing traditional bibliographical theory.
Two issues command particular attention: first, digital texts can be
deliberately and easily created whereby all published copies are
different and unique from one another; second, a digital text may be
unique but be shared simultaneously by multiple users. Given these
realities, are electronic texts amenable to bibliographical control? Can
current definitions of bibliography encompass or be amended to encompass
various anomalies? Are we in fact slipping back into a pre-Gutenberg
world of unique texts whose relevance or suitability for libraries is
determined by function rather than by mode of production?

In light of uncertainty now hovering over the definition of
bibliography, what are the implications for books? I distinguish between
book as physical object and book as intellectual entity. As physical
objects, books have evolved and changed over thousands of years, from
clay tablets to digital formats, and will continue doing so into the
indefinite future. As intellectual entities, however, books will retain
their role as long as there are literate beings concerned with creating
and consuming extended texts of imagination, reflection, and
information. As for the printed book, as opposed to the digital book, it
shows no sign of disappearing, thanks to two factors: human love of the
tactile; and a perception that the longevity and integrity of texts may
be better ensured in "hard copy" format. Some argue that
digital texts represent the triumph of speed and ease over quality and
accuracy!

1) The integrity of texts can be changed and altered seamlessly
without trace (sometimes deliberately and sometimes inadvertently).

2) The longevity of texts is unknown: the textual life span may be
placed in jeopardy by hardware, software, or natural deterioration.

3) Intellectual freedom and freedom of conscience are now called
into question because of the perceived "conspiracy" of
publishers to control access and reading, and by the growing loss of
privacy in a digital world.

4) Universal access is threatened if information is limited to
elites or those with financial resources.

5) The standardization and interchangeability of information
technology decline as systems become increasingly unique.

6) Electrical energy is becoming more expensive and raising the
cost of digital products.

Given the issues and concerns revolving around the definition and
future of books and bibliography, where do libraries stand? I define a
library as an institution for (i) collective ownership of, or access to,
imaginative, reflective, and informative textual materials available in
duplicate copy, (ii) providing service to a defined clientele, and (iii)
functioning as a:

* literacy system:

--providing texts that develop and maintain literacy

--devising and employing indexing/descriptive systems that assume
and promote literacy and access

--supporting and extending memory through published texts that
encapsulate human knowledge

--encouraging and maintaining memory through publication and
reading

* cultural system:

--preserving for posterity humanity's published textual
heritage

--encouraging and assisting use of the published textual heritage

* learning system:

--providing services that promote self-learning, and assist access
to published textual content

--organizing collections to encourage exploration and discovery of
published texts

Darnton's well-known schematization for the book cycle
envisages four stages: creation, production, distribution, and
reception. In the print world, libraries were largely defined by
reception. In the digital world, libraries may also be involved in
creation, production, and distribution. I would argue, however, that the
five systems outlined above require substantial fulfillment for an
institution or collection to be considered a library.

I am concerned by a range of issues facing today's academic
research libraries, several of which I will briefly mention. First, the
wholesale weeding of collections, without consideration of their unique
qualities, destroys a crucial research tool for understanding the
evolution of disciplines and professions. Second, mutilating unique
information (such as benefactors, previous owners, and library-specific
accession or classification markings) when a volume is repaired or bound
removes another research tool. Third, replacing owned physical
collections with leased electronic collections appears frequently to be
done with little or no consideration of long term issues of access and
longevity of texts. Fourth, taking away or severely limiting
patrons' access to professional librarians runs the danger of
libraries turning into digital warehouses.

Books and libraries are my joy and inspiration; their study is my
intellectual and academic focus. That my personal and professional lives
should be so complementary has been a privilege and blessing for which I
shall always be grateful. This world has brought me into contact with a
remarkable cross-section of people who have enriched my mind and
imagination, and without whom my life would have been much poorer.
Fellow book lovers and collectors from whom I am constantly learning are
among my closest friends. My students claim to learn from me, but in
truth I learn even more from them. Books, libraries, and people are my
continuing legacy to the world.

Peter F. McNally *

* Peter F. McNally is Professor, School of Information Studies,
McGill University and Convenor, Library History Network, Canadian
Library Association. In 2011, he was recipient of the Tremaine Medal and
Watters-Morley Prize of the Bibliographical Society of Canada.

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